Expanding perspectives on Air Pollution in Cities

Using data to identify new avenues for city planning

Abstract

The science of air quality is gaining a lot of new grounds in recent years due to new  advances in sensors, data collection, and computing technologies. New sensors are  moved out the laboratories and on to the streets, where they are able in measuring at ultrafine and molecule scales. These data are propelled into health analyses documenting new correlation to a wide array of physical and neurological diseases.

The density in cities of human activity and the canyons between the buildings exacerbate the impacts of air pollution on to humans. With increased urbanisation and increased densification of existing cities this is a global challenge cities face.

In Copenhagen, a collaboration between Google and Copenhagen Solutions Lab , an innovation arm inside the municipality, is using a StreetView car to investigate the air quality of every street in order to generate a data based foundation to find solutions to  cities’ challenges.